Stephen's Art

I thought it was time for another edition of Art by Stephen! When he finished school last month, we came home with a LOT of stuff that he had either made himself, or had help making. As you will see, he is still not so fond of coloring, but he does enjoy other artistic activities! Some are from preschool, and some are from church school, but I'm not sure on all of them where they came from now...

This is his snack mat from preschool. He probably made this one of his first days there, and ate snack on it every day, which is why it's a little beat up looking.
And a seahorse that looks like he painted with watercolors. It looks like this came from preschool as well.

This is a lovely, multi-media piece. We have crayon, marker, and Dot-A-Dot paint pens (You may notice a trend with those - Stephen LOVES those pens. I think I'm going to get some for him soon.).

We have a finger-paint creation, that I think came from Church school. Stephen is actually pretty good about TRYING to stay in the lines. He gets the general idea, anyways.

We have another Dot-A-Dot creation here...

I'm not sure how they made this one, but it looks like a coffee filter.

More Dots...

And a LION!!

But this one, THIS ONE, is my very favorite. It was from church school, and was a collaborative effort with his new best buddy, Aiden. They play together a lot at school, and are pretty close together in age.

We are headed out to AZ soon, so look for some pictures from our vacation soon! Stephen is REALLY looking forward to spending some quality time in the pool at his grandparents' house.

Our little musician

I took Stephen to visit Erik at School last week, and he spent some time playing the piano in his office. Erik caught it with the webcam on his laptop. I stepped in once, because Stephen looked like he was going to take a header into the keyboard.

I think he has a real talent for music (although we already suspected).

Whoopsie!

I've been a bad blogger, and I apologize. We've had a very busy month!!

Since I've been remiss in my updates, I'll start waaaaaaay back at Mother's Day. On his last day of school before Mother's Day, Stephen brought this pot home for me. I watered it, and left it in the sun, and grass began to grow!


On Mother's Day, we spent some time at Grand Lake, in NE Oklahoma, with my parents. The best part of the day was spending a few hours out on a boat, which Stephen just LOVED!!!


Stephen also discovered video games while we were there. He LOVED pretending to drive the cars!! We didn't actually put any money in, since he couldn't reach the pedals, but he liked to steer.

Erik and Stephen and I returned home from the lake that Tuesday, and the following Sunday, we got a HUGE surprise! Around 4pm that afternoon, the rain started. And then came the hail... This was a big pile up by our garage door. We ended up getting about 30 minutes of golf ball sized hail.

These were the divets left in our lawn. It was BIG hail.

Thanks to our homeowner's insurance, we will be getting a new roof this summer, as well as having our siding repaired/repainted and a broken window fixed. Our A/C compressor was damaged as well, but luckily that appears to just be cosmetic, because we NEED our A/C - it's HOT!!

After getting all of the insurance stuff taken care of, Mom, Dad, and I began work on some much-needed kitchen updating. One of our cabinet doors fell off last fall, when the hinge broke in half. So, we decided to replace ALL of the cabinet hardware. As you might imagine, replacing 45 year old hardware had it's issues, but in the end, thanks to some wonderful labor, we have new hardware, and even replaced the lazy susan in our pantry with some slide-out shelving!!

(Whoops)



On May 25th, Stephen had his heart catheter procedure. They ran the line up through his groin (as you can kind of see in this picture), and inserted a 10mm mesh plug into an 8mm hole. The surgeon said that Stephen did perfectly, and when it was checked again in the morning, it was just perfect. Aside from a little soreness and bruising on his right leg, Stephen has recovered completely from this experience.

School is now over for Stephen for the year, and Erik only teaches summer school 4 days a week, so Stephen has been enjoying some quality Daddy-Wrestling time.

So, as you can see, we've been awfully busy, so it's been hard to find time for blogging. I'd much rather find time for this:

Playing is hard...

Park Weather

The weather has been great lately, so we have been spending a lot of time at the park, which is one of Stephen's very favorite things to do! This has been a good distraction when Stephen decides not to nap, usually a weekend thing, but more recently, sometimes during the week as well. It keeps him from getting too fussy because he's tired, and the bonus is that he falls asleep really quickly these nights! I hope this won't be a daily thing, but who knows?

At the park, of course we enjoy the swings...
And the slide - Stephen just loves the big slides too!

This particular day, we decided to try the tube slide. Stephen climbed up the stairs, and then Erik helped him get situated at the top.

This slide? Not a big hit. Stephen was pretty nervous coming down, and was happy not to go again. But we will go again, because it will help Stephen to see that there is really nothing to be afraid of!

School is going well for Stephen still, but he'll be done with that in a few weeks. Then we'll be on our own for the summer, except for "church school" one day a week for 6-7 weeks. The theme of summer session is "Bugs," which should please Stephen. He has been showing an increased interest in bugs when we go to the zoo, so I hope he learns some neat stuff!

What's going on...

It's been a busy week here! Stephen continues to love playing on his slide, and can't wait to go outside every day.

I spoke with Stephen's preschool teacher about summer options, and she said that Stephen is too advanced for their summer school (extended school year) program. This fits with what we've thought all along, but it was nice to hear. Of course, the downside to this is that Stephen will be without therapy for 3 months. His teacher is going to see if we might be able to at least have speech therapy for him while on summer vacation, because he's still struggling with that (although he is making progress at home!). His teacher said that Stephen is doing really well in class, and making a lot of progress, and that he is just a "joy" to have in class! He's also started using the bathroom consistently at school, and not having accidents!!!
On Monday, I took Stephen to the zoo so that we could go to the petting zoo for the first time! I wasn't able to get any pictures of Stephen petting any animals, because he was a bit nervous about it, and wanted to hold my hand the whole time, but he enjoyed himself.

Here's a picture of Stephen exploring a cave at the Children's Zoo. He wasn't too impressed.

He did like the snakes and spiders, though!

But the best part was the cookie afterwards...

On Friday last week, Stephen went to see the cardiologist for his regular check-up on his heart murmur. The good news was that his murmur was undetectable via EKG. The doctor wanted to confirm that it was resolved, and ordered an Echo (ultrasound). During that procedure, we discovered that Stephen has something called an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD). That basically means that there is a hole in the wall between the right and left side of his heart, which can eventually cause heart disease. This is not something that is likely to resolve itself, so our options were to wait a couple of years and have it repaired, or have it repaired now. We have opted to have it repaired now, so that it doesn't affect Stephen's ability to play sports next year (if he wants to - he's showing an aptitude for T-Ball, you know!). So, Stephen is scheduled to have a heart catheter procedure on May 25th, where they will thread the catheter up through his groin to his heart, and will put a small plug in the hole. After about 6 months, tissue will have grown over the plug, and everything will be completely healed! He will have to be monitored still for a while, but after the procedure, he won't have any limitations as to his physical activity (he doesn't actually have any limits now, either). If you can believe it, this procedure will only require one night in the hospital, and minimal recovery time, so after only a few days, he'll be back to normal! So, scary, but good news - we're lucky it was discovered before he was an adult, and had a major problem as a result.

The SLIDE!!!

For the longest time, Stephen has been afraid of the slide. When he was much younger, he would go down the slide on an adult's lap, but even that became a daunting activity for him once he started walking. We suspect that he was nervous when he was walking on play structures at the park, and that's when he decided that he didn't like the slide anymore. BUT, earlier this week, his preschool teacher told me that he happily went down the slide during recess THREE TIMES! Ever since then, Stephen has been wanting to play on HIS slide at home. Today I managed to snap some photos.

He started out just kind of grabbing on to Erik's fingers to get started, and then we would catch him by his hands at the bottom.

Then we would let him go a bit more on his own!

He was all grins after I took this picture!

So I guess there will be even more trips to the park in our future since the weather is nice now - it was never very much fun to go before when Stephen would just fuss at us whenever we tried to get him to do something other than play on the swings. YAY!